For a moment last night, I held him.

I reached an arm under his head and eased him up into my lap. I elevated his burned hand.

I touched his skin.

His eyelids fluttered. I wasn’t sure if he could hear me, or even feel me. There was nothing to say anyway. But I wished that I could stay there even for a minute, holding on, while the empty woods creaked and breathed around us.

But I couldn’t.

And neither could he.

I brought him to the hospital. Left him at the ER doors, making sure no one caught sight of me.

I watched from behind a row of bushes as someone in white scrubs hurried to the doors, summoned others, pushed a gurney out onto the pavement. I watched as they wheeled him inside.

It took everything I had not to follow him through the doors. To be there when he woke. Just to sit there while he slept, holding his other hand.

But the glass doors slid shut and stayed shut. And I went home to wash the blood out of my clothes.

Anders

You dress differently when you’ve only got one working hand.

Pulling on your own jeans? Hard. Zipping and buttoning them? Really hard. Tying your shoelaces? Really freaking hard.

For the first couple days after I came home from the hospital, I wore sweatpants and old pullover sweaters. I barely left my bedroom anyway, so it didn’t matter if I dressed like a total slob. On the second day Jezz and Patrick came over. The both stared at my big bandaged lump of a left hand while trying to look like they were staring at anything else, and then we all sat around and watched videos on YouTube. Not music videos. Just stupid comedy stuff. People doing voice-overs for their fat pets.

Finally, after we’ve been sitting there for almost two hours, Jezz turns so he’s sort of halfway facing me, and says, “Your mom says you don’t remember what happened. How”—he nods toward my hand—“how you got that.”

I shrug.

I can’t explain. Not yet. Not even to myself. The memory is like an open wound in my head. I don’t want to look at it too closely. I don’t even want to think about it. I just want to leave it alone, let it start healing, and maybe when I’m halfway back to normal, I’ll feel ready to touch it again. Maybe.

“Everybody is saying that there was somebody in the woods,” Jezz goes on. “Like, some psycho kidnapper. And you went out and found Frankie, and whoever was holding her tried to stop you, and that’s how your hand got burned. Or something.”

I nod slowly.

“So,” says Jezz. “Was that it?”

He’s looking straight at me now. His eyes are worried. Patrick is watching me, too.

And then, because it seems like the right thing to do, I lie.

“I don’t remember much,” I start. Both Jezz and Patrick keep staring at me, frozen, hanging on every word. “And I don’t think there was a kidnapper. I just think it was some kind of accident, and Frankie was trapped, and I had to reach into a fire to get her out. To get both of us out. That’s all I remember.”